Hi All:
I was taking a break from phone banking and thought I would share this with the Kos family.
My son is in Panama, in the Peace Corps, he shared this letter with me today that he wrote to a right wingnut friend of his that sent him crap about Obama. Now for those out their that are making calls and knocking on doors for Obama. Take a minute to read this, because it sure does help in a nice way.
Please forgive my name calling, granted 'right wing nut job' wasn't the strongest name that came to my mind, but you are right it is a name nonetheless. Accept my apologies. below please find my retort to your political offerings.
I have absolutely had it with the National debate on abortion and gun rights as framed by the Republicans. I hope that at some point we can focus on things that are pertinent to the livelihoods of a vast majority of Americans, things such as the health of our economy, our educational infrastructure, health care in general and the respectability of our country on the world stage.
I don't intend to alienate you, but I am fed up with the perversion of our National political debate by issues that are ancillary by nature and generally a matter of personal choice, a democracy being collective by nature.
That being said let's discuss abortion.
I am not for it. I am appalled by it. I would not go so far as to equate it with slavery, as you did in your forward, but I will not let it define my vote for president. The president can do nothing directly about abortion in America. Absolutely nothing. What he can do is elect Supreme Court justices, which is a very round about method of eliciting change and could by accompanied by unsavory side effects.
What Republicans have done is make you and everyone else who is against abortion on moral grounds think that voting for them will make abortion stop. Let's see. They have been in control of every presidency save 2 since Roe v. Wade and abortion is still legal. Mind you, Republicans appointed most of the justices who laid down the original decision. The justice who wrote the decision was a Nixon appointee (Never mind that Nixon is considered by many nonpartisans to be the most liberal President of the second half of the 20th century. Tricky Dick was no Goldwater Republican). The chief dissenter was nominated by John F. Kennedy...
The Republicans have had control of both chambers of congress and the Presidency under Bush. No change. They have elected two 'strictly constructionalist' justices to the Supreme Court and still the process goes on and on while the debate rips our people apart and has them calling one another "Baby killer" and "Right wing nut job". They have co-opted portions of a previously staunchly Democratic portion of the electorate, primarily middle class Roman Catholics, to turn their back on other equally pressing issues in order to do their dirty work.
Please stop voting Republican. You are not voting to stop abortion. Instead, you are voting against your economic interests!
The Republicans have co-opted you to do their footwork and have not even paid you off by fulfilling their end of the bargain. Meanwhile the loopholes swell, international corporations grow ever greater, the tax havens multiply, small businesses get thrown by the wayside and America becomes one giant debtor.
More important to this country are figuring out ways to regulate the economy so that it grows for the largest percentage of the population and does not have to suffer hideous, retirement swallowing scandals such as The Savings and Loans Scandals of Keating Five, Enron and the current, unnamed mess that we are in. All of which were brought to you by Republican administrations.
More important are incubating small businesses through research, education and smart tax policies that do not continue this trickle down farce.
If you want to stop abortion we have to find another way. Sleeping with the enemy won't do it.
Now let's talk a bit about Gun Control.
This is another non issue.
Point one: There is already gun control in this country and rightly so. People have to feel safe in their homes, granted, but people also have to feel safe from mentally deranged psychopaths in their offices, parks and schools. It is pure numbers. That one wacko out there can do less harm without a gun than he can with one. Would gun control have saved the people who died at Columbine? Maybe not, but less guns in the world means a statistically smaller opportunity for that next wacko to get a hold of a gun and coming into your office blasting.
Everyone in the world does not need a gun and should not have the 'right' to own one. I agree with self defense and I agree with hunters, but let's be reasonable. What is wrong with asking people to take a class and to register their firearm? To submit to a contract, if you will, to society at large by promising to be responsible and careful?
Currently you have to take a class and register to get a license to drive a car. You have to buy insurance. Granted, there is no constitutional right to own or drive a vehicle, but there is a constitutional right to interstate travel and no one is saying that restrictions on who should operate a vehicle are revoking their rights to interstate travel.
Point two: There are no absolute rights in the Constitution. Even the right to free speech is not absolute. I cannot threaten to kill you or scream fire in a crowded public building without repercussions. The Constitution is a public trust whereby we consent to be ruled upon by people who promise to be rational and act in our interests.
Preach anti-gun control to the American Indians and the Alaskan Inuits, preach it to the Mexican freehold of the turn of the century. But don't preach it here and now. Not in the land of drive through everything and Columbine massacres. You really think that you would hold out against the US government with your .22 or even a .38 beretta? Look what happened to Koresh, and he was very well armed. It's not an issue that matters to the majority of people. See above.
Lastly, it is a very circular argument to relate being American with owing or upholding the right to own a weapon if your primary basis for owing the weapon is protection from the American government. Do we really have to be that afraid of ourselves?
If it isn't about abortion and Gun Control, what is it about?
What it is really all about is how those very few in power over the very many of us are going to redistribute our money into public works and subsidies to help our nation grow in a manner that is just. This brings me to a preemptive discussion of point 3.
Redistributive policies. The Republicans and various other conservative pundits have unjustly demonized this word just as they have liberal and socialist. The problem is that we already function as a redistributive power. (And by the way we are very liberal with roots straight from France and we are extremely socialist as well!)
We have a national income tax, established by amendment because it was not meant by the framers to be a power of the Congress. The amendment was ratified by 42 of the 48 states. Income tax is by its very nature a redistributive policy. If we want to attack redistributive policies, why aren't the Republicans, or the Democrats for that matter, talking about repealing the amendment? The only question left is HOW do we redistribute.
It is politically convenient for them to have us duke it out in culture wars by saying that this one is a welfare recipient and the one is a drain on the state. The subtext to that argument has and always be, "Hey you don't want your money going to those poor good for nothing ni**ers or wet**cks do you?"
By far, the biggest welfare recipients, and forgive me Cortni because this was always a touchy point between us, are US farmers. Not illegal immigrants, not welfare queens, not crack heads.But wheat, corn, soy, pork and other farmers. And don't imagine Ma and Pa Buck, imagine a giant corporation and a staff of lawyers. Imagine accountants and consultants.
Tax credits, low interest loans and direct cash subsidies by far outweigh any piddling monthly payment or 5 gallon can of peanut butter that Uncle Sam can give to a crack baby's Mother. If you include corporations as whole and not just corporate farms, the amount of subsidy is astronomical. At some point you have to say, okay these guys are fat enough. Let's turn the spigot down and open up another. Not only would it allow others to develop and prosper, but it would make our entire world more stable and prosperous.
Where could we begin?
Alternative energy maybe? (Why can't we get Brazilian ethanol even though it is far more efficient and inexpensive than US grown corn?)
Education anyone? (Why is it that in the most powerful nation in the world a tertiary education can put a family back a generation through tuition and associated costs, while in Old European places like Norway and Denmark people go to school for free?)
Let's give a lot of people an opportunity to get ahead instead of continuing with Ronald Regan's trickle down policy, which has not been seriously revised since the 80's. Granted, he and the Democratic congresses of his time created the foundation for much of the success that we had in the 90's but now it is time to set a new policy fashioned for a new time.
And that requires serious, sober gut checking political discussion about what is going to work going forward. It's going to require holding our politicians feet to the fire and keeping them focused on what is important to us. Not ten more years of culture wars and finger pointing.